Part 1 - The Manticore Training Dungeon
Chapter 2
Character Aurea; Level 1; Class Rogue; Hit Points 20/20; Mana 11/11; Stamina 32/32; XP 10; Next Level 90 XP needed; Rank Unranked; Followers None; Lethality Trivial
My kukri was in my hand as I spun around and saw that the bones in the footlockers were already half-formed into a single skeletal creature. Huck was trying to take coins from the scale, but he dropped one of the coins and it rolled across the ground. Colin was immediately after it, not paying attention to the bones assembling out of the footlockers. Only Elise seemed to have grasped the situation alongside me and had turned to look at them. Unfortunately, she didn’t react beyond just staring, uncomprehending as the bones slid over each other and formed the misshapen figure of a kobold skeleton.
It’s just a simple skeleton, I thought to myself and readied my kukri. The skeleton stood there, one foot in each footlocker before it took a jerking step out. Its jaw hung wide open, giving a rattling cry as it raised its bony claws that grasped the air, as if it were ripping and tearing flesh. It had the skull of a small alligator and the hunched over form of a rat standing on its back legs, it even had a set of small bones for its tail that swished back and forth angrily, smacking the chests it formed from.
Huck turned at the sound and gave his own warning call, looking for his shield and only then realizing he had left it at the footlockers when he and Elise had investigated it. I tried to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about, it was just a skeleton. We had fought plenty of tougher sims and I cautiously took a step forward, my kukri ready.
The skeleton jerked forward again, and my kukri swiped out, cutting deep into its bone-arm. I saw a number of other nicks and cuts laced almost all of its bones now that it was closer. It had been used in tons of dives over years, and some of the bones were even held together by metal plates that were badly painted to look like bone.
I saw a thin green line appear over the skeleton’s head and the number “4” appeared in red with a line through it. A second, smaller number appeared, “1” and the line dropped by about a sixth. Great, it’s resistant to slashing.
I, of course, knew that. We had fought skeletons in the sims, but that hadn’t been real. I had watched countless divers and dives, and yet it just hadn’t occurred to me in the moment.
I cursed and took a few steps back as the skeleton slashed across the front of my black-plastic armor, its finger bones leaving behind a fresh set of claw marks. No damage, my armor had protected me - though, I couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong. No way should bones have done so much damage to the plastic and leather armor we wore. The plastic almost seemed to tear like paper. I had no idea what the armor rating was for the practice set we were given. It could be some sort of weak foam for all I knew.
A beam of white energy shot past my shoulder, almost hitting my head, and it passed without dealing any damage to the skeleton, slamming into the back wall in a shower of multi-colored light. How had the beam missed, it had struck in the center of the skeleton’s… oh, the bolt of magic had somehow slipped between the empty spaces of its rib cage. The hit box on the skeleton was the bones itself.
Video games had lied to me.
“Another shot, aim for the skull!” I cried back to Elise. She was the one who had cast the radiant beam of energy, a flame lance spell.
“That took a third of my mana!” Elise called back, “I won’t have time to recharge if something else comes!”
Before I could respond, Huck ran past me and slammed into the skeleton with his body, smashing it backwards and they both landed in a heap. The green bar over the skeleton jerked downwards by half, and then I saw a green bar appear above Huck’s head before an inch of it turned red.
I ran over to Huck and tried to find an area where I could stab down with my kukri, but I was scared of accidentally hitting Huck in the attack. I needn’t had worried though as Huck had grabbed the kobold’s alligator-shaped skull and smashed it into the ground, breaking the skull in a single hit. The bar above the kobold skeleton immediately turned red and then faded to black.
Huck was breathing heavily and slowly got to his feet, eying the scattered bones with a wary eye. I was pretty sure he had expended quite a bit of his Stamina to smash the kobold in a single blow like that.
“I got it!” Colin announced as he held up the single silver coin in his hand, proudly showing it to all of us as if it were a prized possession. I just gave him a bewildered look and brushed some of the bone dust off of Huck’s armor.
“On no,” Elise said as she moved over to him, “You got hurt!”
“It’s nothing,” Huck waved her off as he grabbed his shield off the ground and strapped it back on, “just a point of damage. I still have 27 points - don’t need to waste the mana on me. What I need is more stamina.”
Elise ignored him and whispered sana, tracing a small sigil over Huck’s heart, returning his health bar full green. It then sparkled slightly and then faded from sight. Huck thanked her.
The deep cut on the back of his hand, through his black armored gloves, hadn’t healed - only his system given hit points. While he wouldn’t ever die from having his hand slashed open by a skeleton, the system could stagger him once he hit zero hit points. A staggered diver was a dead diver. It would’ve given the skeleton the perfect opportunity to slash open his throat or bite his face off.
“Alright, well now we know its not nineteen coins, let’s try taking a few coins away. I don’t think the skeleton will attack again if we get this wrong. It’ll need a new skull before it can reform,” Huck announced as he walked over to the scale and pulled off a few coins from the scale. Five seconds passed and then the scale raised slightly, but no other response.
I looked down at the kobold skeleton curiously as I rubbed the back of my neck. Even that short fight was causing my tech to grow annoyingly hot.
The skeleton looked remarkably human-like without its mini-crocodile skull. Sure, it had very sharp claws and was only about three feet in height, but I could imagine it as belonging to a child once long ago. I shook that thought out of my head, I was personifying the monsters already and we had only fought a single skeleton. I walked to Huck and saw him scratching his head thoughtfully.
“Not fifteen coins, huh?” I asked looking at the scales and then back at the words. Four takes three. I wasn’t that great at word puzzles.
“Hold on a second,” Elise said, reading the words again, “We need to each take three coins, then put what remains on the scale. We are each four, each member of the team takes three coins and then the jewel gets the remainder.”
I watched Huck give a small shrug, grab five of the coins off the scale. Five seconds passed, and then the scale raised back up so that the jewel and coin trays were on the same level. The statue slid to the side with a grating sound, revealing a tunnel that had been hidden behind it.
“Not bad, Elise,” Huck said as he scooped up the ten coins and the jewel out of the scale, right before Colin could grab them.
“We are going to share all of the loot at the end of this, right?” He asked, staring hard into Colin’s eyes.
Colin stared at Huck as if he wanted to object, but then gave a dejected sigh and agreed. Huck smiled large and handed the coins and jewel to Colin, who quickly put them in a coin pouch.
“What?” I said, not understanding, “Why are you giving Colin anything? He didn’t do anything but chase after that damn coin in the fight!”
Huck turned to me, but before he could say anything, Colin interjected, “Coins are experience! I had to get them! Besides I knew you and Huck could deal with just a skeleton! I’m not wasting my mana on that!”
“YOU RECHARGE MANA!” I angrily shot back.
“IT TAKES MINUTES TO DO SO!” Colin argued. Despite his dark skin, he looked red in the face and took a great breath to continue shouting when Huck jumped between us.
“It’s OK! Everything is fine guys,” Huck said, “In the future we need to be more concerned about dealing with monsters than getting treasure. The coins wouldn’t have flown away, right, Colin? If there is treasure and monsters again, we deal with the monsters first. We all in agreement?”
Huck looked from me to Colin, and back to me. I noticed he wasn’t giving Elise any meaningful looks, but then again, she was all too happy to be a peacemaker.
We both agreed. I was still sore about it. Colin was going to take all of our treasure for himself. But it was fine, maybe I could get on another team after we won this dive. Or the next.
“Good! I’m glad we are working well together!” Huck announced, and then looked over at Elise, “Elise - good job on the puzzle and on the magic, but make sure you aim for the center of the mass. Next time, you’ll get ‘em!”
“I didn’t want to hit Aurea and didn’t think that the magic could just… you know, pass through bones. Don’t think it worked that way on sims.”
“It’s not a problem, we got through it fine. How’s your mana? Can you still heal?”
“I’m OK - I’m at half with 12 points. It’ll take 4 minutes before I recharge 2 mana. I’ll be full at 25 minutes. Heal just takes 4 points, so I can cast it again if needed.”
“Alright, you shouldn’t have healed me, but I do appreciate it. Why don’t you hang in the back for the next room and let Aurea and me handle anything big. Colin, you’re the blaster, make sure you blast.”
With that, Huck turned on his heel and headed into the new passage, shield raised for the next encounter.